Hit & Run: How a bodyguard's statement corners Salman Khan

Mumbai, June 24: Salman Khan is likely to face imprisonment for 10 years. A Mumbai session court on Monday, June 24 said that the actor would be tried for culpable homicide charge in connection with 2002 Hit and Run case. According to reports, it was a bodyguard's statement which had cornered the Bollywood star in the court.

S Erande, the public prosecutor in the case, earlier had said that its witness, police bodyguard Ravindra Patil had repeatedly warned Khan not to drive rashly, but the actor allegedly did not heed him.

The public prosecutor also added that Salman was drunk at the time of the accident in which one person was killed and four others were injured.

Salman initially was tried by a magistrate under lesser charge of causing death by negligence (Section 304A of IPC), that provides for a maximum punishment of two years in jail.

Later a metropolitan magistrate had examined 17 witnesses in the case and had invoked the more serious charge under Section 304 (III) of the IPC against Khan.

Advancing his argument against invoking the grave charge of 'culpable homicide not amounting to murder' under section 304 part II IPC, Salman's lawyer Ashok Mundargi had pleaded that the magistrate's order was "erroneous, bad in law and contrary to evidence on record."

The magistrate, he contended, had failed to appreciate that Salman Khan had neither the intention (to kill people) nor the knowledge that his rash and negligent driving would kill a person and cause injury to four others.